February 28, 2010

Since my wife and I first moved in together we have had 11 pets, six of those are still with us (4 Cats and 2 dogs). The others have died of various illnesses usually at a very advanced age.

Once a pet gets taken in to our home it has a FOREVER home, we do not believe in disposable pets.

Not one of these pets has ever come from a pet store or breeder. All but one were definite rescues. Even the one that I am not classifying as a rescue came from a friend whose grandmother’s barn cat had kitttens.

The dog pictured on this post is one of our younger pets “Tilly”. She wandered in to our subdivision one day and she came to live with us after my wife claims “she followed me home”. I am suspect of this story, I still think my wife lured her to our house.

If I was hoity toity, I would call Tilly a black lab. But I know where she came from. A rural area populated by trailers on acreage on the backside of our subdivision. This was no labrador retreiver. When I asked our veterinarian what she thought, her response was – “I don’t know but there are a lot of them around, I call them Georgia Black Dogs”. The name has stuck.

Our other pets have included – Mr. Kitty, the barn cat. Girl Cat, who was rescued from a thieving drug dealing co-worker of my wife’s. Buddy, the sheltie mix dog who showed up at my mother in law’s front door the day before our wedding (love of my wife’s life). Puss, the black and white cat that was rescued out of the middle of a busy street at approximately 3 weeks old. Boo Kitty, one of our multitude of black cats that was found in an old mill village outside of Atlanta and then at about four years old, was hit by a car and is now known as our cat with “one good eye”. Kitt’n, another black cat who was rescued from an abandoned Suzuki Samurai next to my parent’s house one morning at 3:00 am. Two weeks old, severely dehydrated, near death and now 16 years old.

Then came the handicapped dogs. Suzy, an off white terrier mix with a deformed jaw that causes her tongue to hang out like Snuffy Smith from the comics and results in a perpetually stinky face. Max, our Golden Retriever from the rescue (the love of my life) only had half a tongue from an accident at a young age that caused him to drool constantly and have breath that was reminiscent of “low tide”. These two as a combo resulted in a comment from one friend “what’s the deal? can’t you get at least ONE whole dog”.

The collection is rounded out by Miss Grossie, the final black cat. She moved to our house from one down the street, lived on our front porch for a month and was finally let in because we were going out of town and it was going to be cold. She hasn’t been outside since. The most recent addition was a cat named Mindy who was a rescue from the local Cherokee County Humane Society.